En este video exploramos cómo las grandes ciudades del fútbol se convirtieron en las grandes ciudades del fútbol y si la historia se repite o no en los Estados Unidos. Únase a este canal para obtener acceso a ventajas: 0:00 Introducción 1:14 Patrocinador 1:51 Historial de fútbol 6:56 ¿Historia que se repite?
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Once again Sam showing why he’s the best USMNT content creator by a mile
I actually think this argument has a lot of merit, especially when considering broader American sports culture. Many of the people moving to these migrant cities already have strong established fandom in the bigger American sports from their hometowns. Unwilling to relinquish the fandom of those teams but still wanting a connection to their new community, they gravitate to a sport their hometown doesn’t have or one not ingrained that that community (most commonly soccer).
Big cities in the north already are so entrenched in the teams that already existed prior to mls coming in that they just don’t really have room for a new team to enter their lives for the most part. However, Los Angeles is the exception to this group because besides basketball, they really haven’t had a consistent presence in the other sports due to teams moving out, and recently back in. This combined with the higher Hispanic population compared to other big cities, create quite the soccer fandom.
As for the most successful teams that you mentioned, the fandom definitely has something to do with not having another professional sports team, lacking all 4 major American sports, or at least lacking a strong historical connection with the existing pro teams. The best example of this I think is Atlanta, the existing teams have a pretty poor reputation, so a new soccer team playing in the cities new stadium creates a lot of buzz.
As the mls becomes more popular the teams without other pro teams in the area will definitely have the strongest support
Even though I am a massive fan of Canada, I really liked this video and appreciate the research put into this video. I also liked how you paid respect to football’s working-class roots. I would like to add some points.
Also, I think the suburb argument has some weight. I say this because the large markets of Toronto FC and LAFC have very strong attendances with stadiums downtown while other large markets like Inter Miami and FC Dallas have very low attendances with stadiums in suburbs.
As someone who lives in Dallas, going to an FC Dallas is an hour's drive and there are a lot of inner-city working-class football fans here who simply don’t have the means to commute regularly from downtown to Frisco once a week. This is a part of a greater problem of urban sprawl in the United States. Contrast this to my experience in Toronto where most city residents can go to the stadium on foot or by transit (much like a lot of Premier League and Bundesliga stadiums). Accessibility helps a lot with attendance.
It is also important to understand that larger cities may have greater red tape regarding inner-city stadium development mostly due to the space. NYCFC's struggle to build stadiums in New York City is mostly a product of the city is very densely populated. Likewise, smaller Southeast and Midwest cities have more room to build these stadiums.
You already know this, Sam, but great piece. This was a fun storyline to hear and you weaved in the US landscape really well.
Great video all around. I think soccer in the United States suffers from a couple of things that soccer in Europe doesn't, big the country is and like others have mentioned oversaturation of markets. Certain markets like dfw are held back by how big the metroplex is. The population of Dallas is 1.2 million but the dfw metroplex population is between 6.5-8 million people in an area that would have multiple teams in a European country and not every casual supporter is going to want to travel an hour plus to attend those games. MLS is better to target cities that lack sports teams in the NBA/NFL to get more casuals and build an identity with a team and a soccer specific stadium somewhere in the cities borders
I will point out that if you look at Latin America this pattern simply does not repeat. São Paulo and Rio have most of the biggest clubs in Brazil, Argentina's big clubs are pretty much all in Buenos Aires. Chile's biggest are in Santiago. Mexico's top teams are in the biggest cites. Also it is likely that part of the problem in the biggest cities in the US is that they already have many other, more beloved sports franchises than their MLS clubs. How many teams does NYC have in total? The dynamics of how football teams' support works today is WAY different than the 19th century dynamics that research describes.
Franco was not an ultra right dictator 🤦♂️ He was General who was anti communist and anti socialist, after civil war he reframed the government to make sure communism would never undermine Spain again.
BTW USA aided their war effort. So stop if you don’t know squat about Spanish history and you’re not from Spain please refrain from participating in revisionist history in order to serve your commie masters…
It's always interesting to see capital clubs rarely dominated in the top leagues outside of Russia, Portugal, Ukraine, Spain, Netherlands, and only since Qatar investments, France. Berlin, Rome, Paris until very recently, have never had top clubs. Even in USSR, Moscow clubs were not the best clubs, Dynamo Kyiv being the top club in USSR, a then regional capital. Even in the Prem, where multiple capital clubs are successful, they do not dominate their leagues but are merely one of several top clubs.
Excuse my language:
Holy sh@t what a great f@cking video Sam!!!
I read Soccernomics and wrote a lengthy paper about soccer and it’s cultural impact back in college. One of my favorite books I ever read and you took from it the exact same points I did about the biggest cities not being important in the soccer world cause they don’t have to be.
Please do more videos like this one!
A few points I took away:
1. Not surprised the newer clubs are doing better in attendance, like your interview with DannyT Radio, it’s easy to be the new toy/new club in the block and with the increasing popularity of the sports it’s easier to get attention that clubs formed in the 90s never did.
2. A. Yes there are exceptions around the world like Madrid. In Copa 90’s “Welcome to Berlin Motherf@cker” Berlin is probably the only capital in Europe to have a team never win a top flight league! Even at times Berlin never had a Bundasliga team. A lot of that comes with not having money, big city, but poor.
B. LA is always going to be the exception particularly because of the enormous latino population, that is why they can have 2 mls clubs in the city and thrive!
C. Atlanta United blew attendance records out the water cause they are really the first mls team to attract african americans into the sport in ways they weren’t before. The infusion of Atlanta culture and hip hop brought way way more fans into the team.
3. Even with the monopoly of the bigger clubs in the biggest cities starting to dominate and throw money around, they can never replicate the culture of smaller clubs in Europe. I think we saw that in “Welcome to Wrexham”
Amazing video keep up the good work!
Im a big Detroit City Football club fan! Very passionate supporters in the USL.
I've made this same argument in terms of MLS expansion as well.
The usual American sports mindset is to go huge and just try to capture what you can. A shotgun approach. The MLS strategy should be to look at this places with something to prove rather then just size. Instead of taking the very large areas like an Fransisco or Phoenix, go for Vegas or Sacramento. Or Kansas City
Or Aan Diego. You may notice a pattern in the examples.
I'm gonna give a shout out to Detroit though. I formerly had them on that list of lazy big city choices but their fans schooled me on the topic. Absolutely get a team there.
#kleinout
MLS should be 16 teams each conference, 30 Regular conference and 4 Inter conference games, the inter conference games should be position matched from last season, Example top 4E 🆚 top 4W, the conference winner should be the team that finished 1st 🥇 in each conference in regular league play, this would make every match very important, the playoffs should be a 16 team 4 groups of 4 UEFA Champions League format.
Great vid
Over the first few minutes I was like, "OK, so one of the central theses of Soccernomics?" Haha. Great video, Sam. Way to extend and test the authors' argument in the US market 👍🏼
Orlando City has it all. They're on their way.
great video, very informative and never knew how connected industrial cities are with fan culture but makes sense, bodes will for St Louis City imo
It's very fun supporting our local Sacramento team in the USL. First we wound up at the national finals last year which was beyond exciting. Also you can drive to other local city rivals for away games. In LA we had to drive an hour and a half to get to the stadium whereas in Sacramento it's 15 minutes away. We don't have an NFL team either here although we do have NBA. It's fun to play local rivals like Oakland, San Diego, Orange County, etc. rather than teams from across the country.
I can see LA morphing into a top soccer city. 2 major MLS teams, population, resources and demographics .
Some pushback… Atlanta and Seattle (and Toronto) are Major Markets, equivalent of "Capital Cities" of European countries. Seattle is a major hub, capital city of the Pac Northwest… Atlanta is the capital of the deep South.
To flip things… Soccer in Europe is like College Football & Basketball in the U.S. sports landscape. "Provincial" towns have more success, better supported, historically speaking. Whereas Soccer in Latinoamerica is more like Pro Sports in the U.S., more successful and better supported in "the Big City." The exception to the rules being Los Angeles, CA, which has successful, well-supported College and Pro teams, including Soccer.
Being an Austin fan and supporter I think you described well why this city loves its team so much and your reasoning seems logical. At least here in Austin all your points seem valid. For us it has been a unifying experience with the huge influx of new people and the long time Austinites to have a shared team and passion. No matter if we get another professional team in the future Austin fc will always be special to this city
Los Angeles is the Sports Capitol. USC Trojans Football, UCLA Bruins Basketball, LAFC, Galaxy… sports typically not successful in Major Cities, yet L.A. is home to premiere teams in those sports. No to mention Olympic sports, Combat sports, Action sports… So Cal is Sports Mecca.
I think it’s also important to recognize that there is an anti-soccer stigma in the US that we’re trying to shake off. It’s been seen as a sissy sport or just something that Americans don’t play. Given that, I think the rate at which it’s growing is exceptional and it’s no doubt that cities are benefitting from having soccer in them
Another point is that it seems that NFL, NHL, and MLB fans follow the team they are from. MLS and the NBA tend to have fans based on the city they live in (regardless of where they were born)
8:24 it isn’t exactly fair to use 2020 attendance though because the larger market cities had significantly more strict COVID rules
First, I love you video ideas recently really taking a different angle than most channels.
Secondly, Most of the big markets already have an identity in another sports team. NYC=Yankees, Chicago=Bull, Dallas=Cowboys, Boston=Redsox, Montreal =Canadiens etc. Most of those markets are also already over saturated with sports. New York has 3 NFL, 2 MLB, 3NHL and 2 NBA teams which are established in hindsight the idea MLS was going to easily break into the market is hilarious bc while it does have a large immigrant and soccer loving population why put a soccer game on TV with unknown/iffy rating when you can play NFL, MLB, NBA, or even college team that TV channels know exactly what the rating will look like. Much easier to sell ads based on the latter.
In markets like Charlotte or Portland that isn't a problem bc of less sporting franchise call those cities home. Those market are probably MLS best chance at creating identity or culture.
i’ve always said Fort Worth is the perfect city for an MLS and USL team!!! I wonder if this can be applied to USL clubs like New Mexico, Locomotive and Louisville
London has 20 (twenty) professional football clubs. its the football capital of the world regardless of how many UCL titles.
Great video mate👍
I noticed that too Sam and was always curious how Berlin and Rome’s teams were so bad despite being the largest cities in their respective countries.
However, it’s the quite opposite in Latin America. The biggest teams in Mexico come from the 3 biggest cities in Mexico. All of south America’s biggest teams, come from either the biggest or second biggest cities in their respective countries.
It’s crazy to think about why that is.
San Diego will be the Barcelona of the MLS
Detroit would love an MLS franchise, and the blue collar tribalism would allow it too grow.
Sam – absolutely love this video. Have been watching for a while now but first time I felt obligated to comment. This sort of content absolutely fascinates me and Soccernomics has been on my list to read for a while now.
I think (as a lifelong American football fan) that there’s a comparison/analogy to be made to the American football fandoms of the US industrialized Midwest. Steelers, Packers, Bills, Browns have some of the most diehard fans. I think your comparison to the Silicon Valley age and the rise of Portland, Seattle, etc is such a great contrast to this. As an Indiana resident who really solidified my soccer fandom during the 2017 FC Cincinnati USOC run, I think that soccer fan culture is such a great atmosphere that really only rivals college sports out of the other major US sports. Keep up the great work, love your content!
I completely agree. I'm from Fort Lauderdale and while I'm a huge Inter Miami fan they wreste with (and will probably continue to wreste with) the same thing the other major sports teams here face. Everyone here is from somewhere else and there's a milion great things to do here. Yet I think loyalty will grow as generation continue to be raised here.
I'm loving the growing love for the sport in the US, but when are you all going to finally call it Football and not the S word.
Great analysis. I think another factor impacting the popularity of MLS teams in large cities is competition for attention/relevancy with more established sports franchises. People only have a limited amount of time/money/attention they can put towards following sports. New York City has 2 teams each in the NFL, MLB, and NBA as well as 3 NHL teams. It would be difficult for the Chicago Fire to pull sports fandom and attention away from massive, historic franchises like the Bears, Cubs, and Bulls.
When NYFC gets its own place their attendance will change.
Loved the video, talking about culture and history!
Inter Milan is greater than Man U, AC Milan and Juventus
Lol left out the London clubs?
I actually think LA could become "Madrid-esque" in the long run. There really is a soccer undercurrent here in the LA metro area. It's a result of the Latino influence on this part of the country.
I'm gonna go and put a bold statement. By 2050, the two MLS teams will be the most popular sports teams in the LA area. Soccer as of this moment is niche everywhere with hotspots but, I truly believe LA is gonna emerge as one of the first true soccer-dominant cities in the nation. I think both LAFC and the LA Galaxy will win a lot of trophies in the next 20 years. LA is gonna be soccer hub central.
Other than that, I don't know about Chicago. But I kinda see New York becoming "London-esque". There teams will win every now and then but experience a lot of years of dissapointment in the process. Like Arsenal and Spurs.
But anyways. I'm talking out of my ass lol. Great video Sam!
Aside from the founding of the league, this is the most exciting time for MLS. The European leagues – excepting the EPL – have hit a ceiling. Meanwhile, the future for MLS is wide open. The 94 World Cup might have set the stage for the founding of the league, but WC 2026 is coming at the right moment to see the league explode.
Great idea for a video, man, keep it up!